Thursday, 12 March 2015

Deification Of Leaders, Sanitizing Their Backgrounds

The problem that there is in Zambia in particular, and
Africa in general, is the deification of leaders—hoisting them to the level of
god or something of that sort.

What tends to happen is that once an ordinary person—they
are all ordinary anyway—assumes the rarefied office of national leadership
especially the presidency, his background that his friend knew in the
not-so-distant past knew, is suddenly sanitized—wiped clean.

This is what seems to be happening with President Edgar
Chagwa Lungu, in office as a head of state just a matter of weeks, just less
than two months at the time of writing. There was the unfortunate incident of
him collapsing in publicat the Heroes Stadium on International
Women’s Day on March 8, 2015. He told the citizens who had gathered to
commemorate the day that he thought he had malaria.

Later that day, State House issued a statement affirming the
malaria story but adding an element of fatigue to it. A day or so later, in
another bulletin, the country was told that the President suffered from the
effects of a condition called Achalasia, a condition that very few non-medical
citizens had heard of.

The Post, one of Zambia’s leading private dailies, whose
staff have known President Lungu, probably even long before he became Chawama MP,
discounted the State House medical bulletinsand, rightly or wrongly, drilled it down
to one thing that brought about the sudden collapse of the head of state at the
Heroes Stadium—alcohol.

The Chikwanda Tapes

Long before the January 20 elections even before we thought
Lungu would cross the State House rubicon to become Zambia’s sixth president,
the “Alexander Chikwanda tapes”—a recording of a conversation between Finance Minister Chikwanda and an
unknown person—published by the Post, quoted the veteran politician saying “kalikwata amano nangu
nakanwa” loosely translated as Lungu is intelligent even in a drunken state.
Going by the rule of unintended consequences, this in my view, endeared people
to Lungu with whom President Michael Sata had left the instruments of power on
the ill-fated trip to the UK where he went for a medical check-up but died
while there.

Talking about leaders’ backgrounds, the media in countries
like the US and Britain continually refer to them to understand their
performance in office and their personality vis-à-vis decision making and the
policies they craft. In Britain for instance, the media keep on referring to
the Bullingdon Club, an exclusive club of students from wealthy backgrounds at
Oxford University, something British Prime Minister David Cameron does not like
at all as a former member. Bullingdon Club members would trash pubs after
drinking and later pay for repairs. In America, Bill Clinton famously admitted
to smoking cannabis but saying he did not inhale!

President Edgar Lungu, flanked by his wife, Esther, arrives at Milpark Hospital in South Africa.

The most surprising reaction to the Post’s editorial comment
in which it insinuated that President Lungu’s woes on the fateful day were the results
of alcohol, came from Information and Broadcasting Minister Chishimba Kambwili
threatening that government would stop advertising in the tabloid as well as
stopping government ministries and departments from buying the paper.

Said Kambwili: “Does anyone understand Mr M’membe’s thinking to put in his newspaper such a
childish headline [Chagwa Agwa—Chagwa falls]? For him to write that the
President collapsed because of alcohol is not only evil but also untrue […] If
he continues on this self-destructive path we will have no choice government
will have no choice but to stop buying and also advertising in The Post.”

Pravda And Communist
Daily

Kambwili’s statement is reminiscent of the days of Pravda in
the former Soviet Republic, now Russia and some of its neighbouring countries
after the country’s break up in 1989/90, and China’s Communist Daily, both of
which served as propaganda outlets over which were superintended by a censor
literary cutting out stories that were not favourable to government and the
leaders.

Zambia is currently a liberalized economy with guaranteed
freedom of expression. Government, by bullying private newspapers by
threatening to cut off advertising from which they derive revenue is infringing
on not only freedom of expression but freedom of the press too and it is
outright dictatorship.

What Kambwili wants to do is sneak in the ‘les majeste’ law which exists in kingdoms or monarchs where people are arrested if they
speak ill of the king, the queen or royalty in general. Lungu is an elected
head of state and not a monarch for whom people should not express an opinion.
Even Zimbabwe, a country which is one police long baton short of a
dictatorship, scrapped the criminal defamation law.

Without punishing the Post with stopping government from
advertising in the paper, the truth surrounding President Lungu’s illness will
evolve and whoever—that includes State House—will have told lies in the process
will be exposed and their credibility will suffer.

In a democracy like Zambia, the only crime pertaining to the
presidency really should be plotting to unconstitutionally removing an elected
head of state and not the funny cases of bringing a head of state’s name into
hatred, ridicule and contempt. Heads of state of even more powerful countries
are ridiculed all the time and, in the case of America, all people claim is the
first amendment.

Suppression of background information about our leaders is
what has skewed our understanding of the country’s history because only the
positive side of their backgrounds is brought out. We need to learn to trace
our leaders as far back as the records and live accounts can permit. As such,
there is no need to scare the Post into silence!

2 comments:

In regards to the Post article, the minister was not annoyed because it said Mr. Lungu drinks, but because it indicated that Mr. Lungu's ailment was as a result of alcohol; in my view this information you have omitted could have assisted a reader in assessing whether there were grounds for the Minster to express concern with the article in the Post Newspaper; from your example of the UK and the drinking Prime Minister, if the British Prime Minister fails sick, would it be ethical to write in a British Newspaper that the Prime Minister ailment is caused by beer drinking when his doctors have stated otherwise, of course the handlers of the British Prime Minster would wish to put the record straight just as the Minister of Information in Zambia had done; what would be bad for media freedom would be to close the newspaper for such an issue; unethical reporting needs to be challenged whether that in Africa or elsewhere.